I woke this morning from a dream in which I was shopping in a grocery store when the lights went out for the first time as America began running out of fossil fuels. Immediately, an ordinary shopper a few aisles over became a looter and the guns were pulled out.

The news tells me that terrorists are becoming more active and a group of them are probably on the loose today in these United States. I'm not feeling any safer since the war on terror began.

It's cloudy out, a soft spring rain. My boys are camping in Canada as they always do this time of year. The girls stay home and spoil themselves with french toast on a school day and Dairy Queen for dinner.

Yesterday I witnessed an exchange that made my heart sink, it was so clothed in disrespect and power imbalance.

I spent the evening on the phone last night calling up members of a church committee, looking for money to help three different impoverished women. One, surely the poorest one, is in a situation with little hope of improvement on the horizon. The other two are caught up in this precarious economy where jobs are scarce. I have a call to return today from yet another person looking for money.

These threads are weaving my day today. Gray skies, missing my boys, a country sick with dis-ease. One needs to look inward to summon up some hope. I'm off to light a candle.